


Last Rites

by MyresLight



Category: The Godfather (1972 1974 1990)
Genre: @francis ford coppola i reject your reality and substitute it for my own, Abduction, Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Blood and Injury, Emotional Baggage, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Cheating, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, M/M, Medical Inaccuracies, Mutilation, Period-Typical Homophobia, Sexual Content, Unresolved Romantic Tension, probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24745390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyresLight/pseuds/MyresLight
Summary: The package had been left just outside the compound."They got Tom."
Relationships: Sonny Corleone/Tom Hagen
Comments: 4
Kudos: 64





	Last Rites

**Author's Note:**

> I intentionally left the time frame of this fic vague but I’d say it’s after Connie’s wedding but before the shit with Sollozzo goes down and yes I know I fucked with dates to make this work but there’s not much I can do about that.

The package is small and light, but carries with it a distinct smell, reminiscent of rotting meat at the butchers which had been left out in the sun for an hour too long.

It had been left just outside the main gates of the compound.

When Sonny opens the package, his stomach rolls with nausea, because it’s a finger, bisected just above the knuckle, ring still in place. And he knows, he knows immediately whose it is. Before Michael, Clemenza and the rest can even get a proper look, he knows.

“Jesus Christ.”

Michael, perceptive as ever, is the only one to register his brother’s half-silent words.

“What? What is it Sonny?”

Sonny feels something cold wash through him.

“They got Tom.”

The room silences. For a second, no one dares breathe. Because this isn’t one of their expendables; it isn’t one of countless paid off officials, button-men, or thugs.

A second passes, then two. Then Sonny feels that familiar red-hot rage descend. He has just enough presence of mind to set the finger – Tom’s finger it’s _Tom’s finger_ – gently on the coffee table, before he lifts up the closest thing to him of any substantial weight, in this case a glass ashtray that was a present from Sandra’s mother when she visited Boston, and uses all his strength to throw it at the wall, where it shatters into pieces and falls to the floor.

“ _Jesus, fuck!_ ”

The silence breaks with the ashtray as several voices start speaking at once, falling over each other in an increasingly alarmed din as Sony paces through the room like a wild thing.

“Sonny! _Sonny!_ ”

“I’ll kill them! I swear to God I’ll _kill them!_ ”

“What? Kill who?”

“How do we know it’s for real?”

“Is someone gonna tell me what’s in the package?”

“Sonny! Will you _sit down!_ ”

Sonny knows he’s got a temper. That he flies off the handle. And he can admit that he’s probably unduly anger in many of those instances, that he’s likely blown a situation well out of proportion.

But he’s never felt anger like this. It’s a different anger, he knows, because it feels much colder.

And he knows that it’s different this time, because ever since he brought Tom Hagen back to his home in 1926, he’s felt responsible for him. As if the half-starved and sick boy held Sonny’s heart in his hands, even back then. Because Sonny loves Tom, in a way he knows he shouldn’t. In a way that he should love Sandra, something that’s so fundamentally different from how he loves Fredo and Michael. His one terrible secret.

And someone knows this. He doesn’t know _how_ they learned this, but someone knows how to get to where Sonny is most exposed.

“Michael, will you get on the phone _now_ , I want our favours called in with Nobilio and Pentangeli. I want the son-of-a-bitch who did this found, and then I want you, me, and twenty men over to his place with a car full of guns—”

“Sonny _shut up_ and _listen_ to me.”

And Sonny doesn’t know why, but he does. He stops pacing around the room and he turns to glare at his kid brother, who always sees what others usually overlook.

“You think I don’t want to get him back too? But _Christ_ Sonny, how do we even know it’s Tom? And, for that matter, let’s do what he’d tell us to do and stop and _think_.” Michael’s temper is unlike Sonny’s. It’s slower to rise, but once it does, a stubbornness accompanies it. And this means that when Michael talks, people are inclined to listen.

And right now, they need to listen. Because Vito’s not in the house. He’s overseeing some legitimate business in Albany with Tessio. And it leaves them all the weaker, because they’ve got no boss and now they’ve got no consigliere, and Sonny’s left, holding the family together and trying not to panic.

Once he sees that all eyes are on him, Michael continues, “We’ll get eyes out on the streets, start asking around. We’ll call in a couple of favours with the cops and try and get this package traced.”

This doesn’t improve Sonny’s temper, and he marches across the room, until he’s almost toe to toe with his brother. “And how d’you know that that’s gonna work? Huh?”

“I don’t, but I’m ready to chance that it will, are you?”

There’s a tense moment where neither Sonny or Michael move, staring each other down, trying to psych the other out. And Sonny briefly considers ignoring his kid brother completely. He thinks about going out on his own if it comes to it, and searching New York street by street until he finds Tom.

But then he pauses, and he know what Tom would say if he were there. How he’d get riled up in a way that only Sonny could get him, and tell Sonny in no uncertain terms that they needed to pause, and do this sensibly, or else they risk losing him completely. He knows that Michael’s right.

And so Sonny unclenches his jaw, which takes more effort than he’ll admit, and yields to Michael.

“Alright fine, _fine._ We’ll do it your way.” Sonny moves around Michael, breaking the tense atmosphere and picking up his suit jacket. He runs a hand through his hair and vaguely notes that sweat is starting to bead on his forehead. Turning back to Michael, he continues, “But I’d better see some fucking results.”

With that, Sonny finally leaves the room, walking outside to light up a cigarette. He leans against the house wall, bricks digging into his back, not painfully but enough that he registers the pressure, allowing cool air to wash over him in an attempt to reign in his temper.

After taking a long drag, he tilts his head back to close his eyes and he breathes the smoke out slowly. Because if Michael’s wrong and they can’t find Tom, Sonny’s ready to bring war down upon them. He’d burn cities to the ground for Tom.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, it takes eight days to find him.

Michael ends up being right; a bit of pressure, and the information from various informants came pouring in. Before long, they both confirmed where Tom’s pick-up occurred and had the package traced, if not who sent it.

The car pulls up outside an old and decrepit warehouse that sits on the fringes of Hell’s Kitchen, where the Irish gangs have been known to work from. That feels like a slight too. Sonny goes with them and it’s beyond stupid; someone has been able to get to the family, they’re weakened and he should be careful at the minute.

But they have Tom.

The warehouse is large and damp. And it’s cold, it’s very cold. The November chill settling heavy over the city, signalled by early morning frost creeping along the corners of windows and across the old wooden floor.

He’s near the back when Sonny spots him, and if he weren’t looking, Sonny wouldn’t have known that he was there.

“Tom!”

Sonny runs over and falls down beside the other man, and what he sees knocks the breath from him.

When Sonny first met Tom, at a park close to where the Corleone’s attended school, the other boy had been sitting slumped up against a brick wall, arms locked tightly around crossed legs, full body trembles running through him. He still doesn’t know what exactly compelled him to go up to the other boy. Although they both privately thought that, while there was no clear reason behind it, there hadn’t needed to be. That the compassion of Sonny and the loyalty of Tom was clear all those years ago, and in a small but significant way it had resonated between the two of them.

The man he sees now is closer to the orphan on the street than the brother he has come to know.

His clothes are dirty and thin, almost as if a layer had been removed from the man. It’s not enough to keep him warm in the otherwise oppressing cold, and judging from the full-body shivers, Tom is experiencing the temperature at an worryingly intimate level. He seems to be cradling his left hand tight against his chest, but it’s hard to tell as Tom has folded in on himself.

Sonny feels something in him break, and his eyes are burning as he falls down beside the man he has loved for most of his life.

“Tom? Tommy? Come on Tom, look at me.”

There’s no response, and Sonny feels that familiar rage rising in him as he reaches out and grabs hold of Tom’s upper arms, shaking them.

“ _Tommy!_ Tom I swear to God, look at me _now_. Tom, _please_.”

There’s a moment of hesitation. And Tom shifts, slightly, and then turns, raising his head up by inches. His eyes come into focus and he retreats back from himself.

“Sonny?”

The voice is horse, and tired, and sore. But it’s still _him_ , it’s still Tom, and Sonny almost laughs the relief is so stark within him. Then the meagre light from one of the warehouse’s high-raised windows catches on Tom’s face, and rage that was simmering riles up again. Because Tom looks bad. His face is covered in dark patches of purple bruises, and his left eye is closed over. There’s a stretch of scabbed-over blood crossing his jaw that Sonny knows instantly has been made by a knife. He looks further down and sees that Tom’s left hand has been wrapped up in a thin cloth and Sonny immediately realises two things; the cloth is actually a piece of Tom’s shirt, and that it’s dark with dried blood.

Sonny knows then that even if it kills him, he’s going to get his hands on the guy responsible, and wring the life from him. And he promises, sitting on the rotting warehouse floor, that he’ll make it slow. That he’ll make it hurt.

He’s brought back to the present when he feels Tom reach out with his right hand and touch his cheek.

“Sonny? Are you here? Are you really here?”

In that moment, Sonny feels very breakable. Like his mother’s good dinner plates, like the stupid ashtray from Boston.

“Yeah.” His voice is choked, and softer than he’d usually allow it. But in the half-light it’s only the two of them, his men sweeping the building for any trace of the culprits. He reaches back and holds Tom’s face too tightly between his own hands, the air becoming heavier around them. “Yeah Tommy, I’m here.”

Then Tom smiles at him. A smile that’s reserved only for Sonny. The one that changes his whole face, that makes his grey eyes dance. The one that’s there when Sonny play-fights with Fredo, when they’re both sitting in meeting with Vito, listening to stupid requests and struggling to contain their laughter. There are other bright, genuine smiles that Tom gives. Like when Carmela pulls him into a tight hug, or one of his kids comes running up with a crude drawing. But the one that Sonny sees in front of him is shared between the two of them. It’s the one there in quiet moments, when they escape from the city and their stifling marriages for the weekend, when they’re lying in a rented bed and the first light of the day filters in past a split in the curtains.

Tom smiles and it’s alright. For a second, everything’s alright.

“Knew you’d find me.”

Then Tom slumps forward into a dead faint.

It’s then that Sonny truly starts to panic.

The rush from the warehouse to the closest hospital is a mad thing, and Sonny doesn’t take note of the weight of Tom as he and his men half-drag him to the car, or the smell of burning rubber as the tires screech against the asphalt. He only brings himself back to the present when the nurses try to take Tom where Sonny has a firm hold of him in the backseat. He’s on the verge of losing it completely, and hurls insults at the hospital staff before, miraculously, someone is able to convince him to hand Tom over into their care.

A large part of him, the dark, possessive part that holds on tightly to people, but can’t let them go, is screaming at Sonny to take Tom straight back to the compound. Take him back to his family, where it’s safe, where no one can get to them. Where Sonny can sit in the old room that the two of them used to share and forget that they live a life where Tom can be taken and tortured, and be seen to have got off easy. Where they can sit, just the two of them, completely at peace.

But the rational part of him – the part that, over the years, has started to sound more and more like Tom – knows better. And so, with reluctance, he lets Tom go, and he’s carted off into surgery.

Over the next hour, various individuals from the Corleone family move in and out of the hospital grounds, securing the area and reporting back to Sonny. He’s told at one point that word of the abduction has gotten back to Vito, and that his father will be back home within the week.

Theresa is in hysterics when she gets there, which renews the guilt that Sonny’s been carrying around for eight days, for most of his life; because he likes Theresa, and he knows that she loves Tom. And, after all, it’s Sonny’s fault Tom was taken. Everyone knows that, even if they don’t know the exact reason why.

He’s always suspected that Theresa knows, but chooses to be intentionally blind in favour of pretending to her sons that her and Tom's marriage is as it should be. Tom and his wife are similar in that way; they both have a deep wealth of knowledge that is often underestimate, and can convey mush while saying little.

It’s expected that he wait outside until Tom regains consciousness, so that’s exactly what Sonny does. Those who know him would be surprised at the patience that Sonny is capable of. Only Tom, the one person who can calm the storms of the eldest Corleone, truly understands what compels Sonny into a fragile state of peace. It’s the fact that he’s worried. More worried than he lets on. It’s been so long since he’s seen Tom in such a vulnerable state. He can’t remain angry, not at Tom, so instead he lets the guilt sit in the pit of his stomach as he stands vigil outside the hospital room, keeping a careful watch over his consigliere.

The doctor emerges from Tom’s room and where Sonny and the rest of the family are gathered as he explains that, unsurprisingly, Tom’s suffering from mild pneumonia. As well as that, while Tom had managed to stem the bleeding from his missing finger, it came at the cost of using a dirty cloth, resulting in a moderate case of septicaemia. The doctor estimates that it could take up to a week for Tom to wake up.

Tom wakes up two days later, because there’s always been a stubbornness within him to match Sonny’s own. It’s subtle but enduring, and suggests an underlying stability to Tom’s nature; like he’s always been there, and always will be. The one unshakable constant. It makes incidents like these all the more unsettling.

Sonny doesn’t get to see Tom properly until the evening he’s discharged home to the family compound – which the doctor was encouraged to do following a small bribe – and he, Michael, and Fredo are all herded in to see their brother.

“I thought it was the Straccis at first, but it wasn’t, was it?”

Reliable Tom Hagen, business first, even when he’s bed-ridden and looking one missed meal away from death’s door.

“Nah. We’re thinking it was some small time gang from the west side. Irish. Probably lookin’ to grab some influence with one of the big families.” Sonny brushes his concerns off, as if he hasn’t spent every waking hour of the last two days pouring all their resources into finding whatever they can on Tom’s abductors, and is still no closer than when he started.

He’s catches sight of Tom’s bandaged hand and feels sick all over again.

“And they got me ‘cause what? Some sort of revenge for siding against blood?” Tom says with a blank expression and a deadpan voice.

Sonny’s mouth quirks up in a half smile, knowing that Tom and he are both aware of the reasoning behind Tom’s abduction. Because the fact that they bothered to include Tom’s ring when it could just as easily have been pawned off tells them both all they need to know. It’s crude, but the point has been very blatantly made.

“Yeah. Somethin’ like that.”

At that, Tom smiles up at him, and Sonny feels something rise in his chest that’s both joyous and sorrowful. _'I love you. God, I love you so much that it scares me. If you died before me I wouldn’t know what to do, ‘cause I can hardly remember a time before you. Don’t leave me’._

Michael and Fredo exchange a few pleasantries with Tom before leaving, knowing that after a serious job or hit has gone down, initial conversations are succeeded by private, more irrelevant discussions between Tom and Sonny. And if the two younger brothers suspect anything more than trivial conversations occurring, they both in their own way chose to look somewhere else. Because ever since Tom came home, Michael and Fredo knew that Sonny had a different relationship with the other boy, even if they didn’t know the nature that this eventually manifested as.

When the door clicks closed behind him, Sonny wastes no time before pacing over to Tom’s bed. He sits down on the mattress with apparent confidence, but there’s an underlying hesitance that couldn’t be seen unless someone was looking for it. It feels like he’s warning Tom away, giving him an out that Sonny knows with certainty the other man will never take.

He pauses for a moment, almost as if he’s taking time to consider his words, “Helluva scare you pulled on us Hagen.”

Sonny turns his head to meet Tom’s gaze, and he’s not surprised to see that his eyes are incredibly sad, and Sonny thinks privately that he’ll always be the cause of Tom’s biggest griefs. Sonny wishes that he was shamed by that.

“Nothing that you couldn’t handle.” And Tom’s right, but there was a point where he was very nearly wrong. Where Sonny felt close to losing it. All because of Tom Hagen.

There’s a lull between the two of them, and then Tom takes Sonny’s left hand gently with his right, running his thumb over the skin at the base of Sonny’s fourth finger, apology and forgiveness all at once. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. Publicly, it’s so he gives off the, albeit accurate, appearance of a stern and ruthless mafia boss. That he’s a man without weakness or sentiment. Privately, and hidden so deep that he hasn’t even consciously examined this part of himself, he knows that there’s only one person he’d wear one for. Nothing and everything separates that deluded fantasy from reality.

Neither of them need words at that moment, because Sonny feel almost two decades worth of a shared life in the gentle grip Tom has on his hand. And Tom is familiar with words, has had to be in order to serve as the family lawyer for as long as he has, but when doors close and the two are left alone, he holds himself back, as if an undercurrent of fear restricts him. But Sonny could never doubt that in these gentle touches, in the way that Tom leaves his desk light on for Sonny when he’s working late, when his temper rises to talk Sonny down from hasty decisions, when he gives him the newspaper crossword to do, that what he’s saying is simply ‘ _I love you too. You brought me home and I know you always will’._

With anyone else, it would scare him, the idea of being seen and understood so completely by another person that everything about him is laid bare. That all the darkest parts of himself are left uncovered. But with Tom, it’s something so natural that it only brings warm familiarity. It feels like some integral part of him. For twenty-one years, whether at odds or in agreement, Sonny and Tom have only needed to share a look to completely understand the other.

A bone-deep fatigue hits Sonny suddenly, as if the stress and adrenaline from the past week has finally left him.

“Right c’mon, shift over.”

And Tom does. Naturally, implying a familiarity and confidence behind his actions, as if they had practiced this habit so often that it had almost become second nature. That Tom had grown used to the idea of sharing a bed with Sonny.

After a minute of shuffling, Sonny had finally gotten himself in a comfortable enough position, looking across at the other man.

With the earlier tension dispelled, Sonny reaches round and tugs on one of the cushions propped up behind Tom. “Just ‘cause you're sick don’t give you the right to take all the pillows _stronzo._ ”

“ _Vaffanculo.”_ Tom replies, although the smile on his face negates any serious infliction the tone of his voice might otherwise suggest.

Sonny grins in response. He was the one to teach Tom Sicilian, and it gives him a private, almost manic joy that, here, he gave Tom these words, gave him a part of himself, and Tom held tightly to that, and paid him back with words of his own.

After lifting himself up to allow Sonny to slip the pillow out, Tom settles back down onto the bed. Reaching out again, this time to run his hand down the side of Sonny’s face, Tom opens his mouth as if to say something, before seemingly losing the words and closing himself up. And even though there’s no words, Sonny still understands. He has done since he was eleven and he saw a boy with no home and knew instantly where he belonged. Tom had spent the better part of his life trying to pay back that unexpected compassion, and Sonny spent the better part of his trying to convince Tom that there’s no debt, that there never was. Now, two decades later, Sonny may not know what exactly Tom was going to say, but he knows the sentiment behind it.

Sonny thinks of all the things he wants to tell Tom right now. How worried he was. How, for eight days, he could hardly think straight. He wants to tell him how important he is to the family, despite Tom never believing it. Sonny wants to grab him and yell at the top of his voice that ever since Tom climbed into their shared bed on his first night with the Corleone’s, Sonny knew that was it for him, for both of them. That he was going to spend the rest of his life with the boy lying across from him. And he thinks that Tom knew that then too.

He wants to tell Tom all of this, but out of the two of them he was never the one with the words. If Tom was the “thinker”, he was the “doer”. So instead of telling Tom anything, he grabs the other man’s shirt and pulls them into a kiss, before rolling Tom onto his back and settling on top of him. Tom’s legs cradling his own, and a familiar heat building between them.

They don’t do much more than rock against each other, shirts half unbuttoned and pants pushed down, Sonny holding Tom’s face tight between his hands with their foreheads pressing together, a sea of almost-words the only thing between them. When it’s over, they’re both tacky and damp from their sweat, clothes wrinkled and dirty, and Sonny feels a great gentleness at the heart of him. It’s always happens like this, in the quiet moments afterwards, where everything’s that more vulnerable.

Sonny rolls off Tom to lay on his side, in the place where Theresa sleeps. He rests his hand gently on Tom’s neck running his thumb along his pulse line and his eyes across the other man’s face, checking over each part of him, almost to assure himself that Tom’s still there, alive and warm.

There’s a few loud noises from downstairs, likely the result of the kids running around indoors and unsupervised. It breaks the heavy tension between the two men, and they both look away from each other. Never lifting his hand from where it rests on Tom’s neck, Sonny takes a moment to gather himself before again turning back to Tom. His consigliere is still concentrating on Sonny’s dress shirt, his expression turning sadder, worry lines running deep across his brow. Sonny knows more than a few are by-products from a life of managing his volatile moods and the general dangers that come with being part of a criminal family, and he wants to spend the rest of his life sitting in the quiet with Tom, smoothing the lines out and holding him within a calm present.

But Sonny knows that he’ll never get that peace with Tom; he’ll never get to take him slow dancing, or wake up in a bed only they share. He’ll never have that easy intimacy, being able to hold him at the kitchen table, unafraid of who might see. So instead he settles for another stolen minute, and tightens his hand around the back of Tom’s head.

He’s stayed long enough as it is, and knows that ten minutes more, someone will be dispatched up to check in on Tom, at which point Sonny should be long gone.

“Tom.”

“It’s ok Sonny, we’re ok.” He hates how sombre yet resigned Tom’s voice sounds, but, as usual, it’s just one more thing that he can’t do anything about, other than accept. One more regret within a lifetime’s worth of them.

“Ok. Good.”

It doesn’t feel ok, but it never does once the two of them draw to the end of their private interludes. Sonny leans in halfway, as if to kiss Tom a final time, before pausing and just as quickly pulling back up. Better to minimise the already gaping wound than extend the hurt. With considerable effort, he lifts himself up from Tom’s bed.

Stroking back the wayward strands of Tom’s hair a final time, Sonny turns to leave.

A soft voice causes him to pause, his hand resting on the door handle, “Thanks, Sonny. Thanks for finding me.”

Sonny let’s put a huff of breath that could almost be called a laugh, “No problem Tommy.” And, without turning around, he leaves Tom and all their unspoken words in the quiet, where they belong.

He walks back to his own room, climbs in to bed, and falls asleep.

**Author's Note:**

> Because sometimes you start getting emo over two guys from a 40 year old movie and you just gotta deal with that. 
> 
> I know that the Sicilian is probably not right so apologies but also if anyone has a better translation please do give me a shout! 
> 
> tumblr: @arinanemartell


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